Opening a cafe is a hundred-item list, and "sort the online stuff" sits somewhere below "find a pastry supplier" and above "learn the till". Fair enough. But the online items have a property most of the list doesn't: order matters enormously. Done in the right sequence, the whole lot takes a few calm hours spread over two months. Done in the wrong sequence, you get the classic new-cafe tragedies — the signwriter paints a name whose domain is taken, or opening weekend arrives and Google has never heard of you, because verification takes longer than anyone budgets for.
So here's the sequence, as a countdown to opening day. None of it needs technical skill, most of it is free, and each step exists to be done before the one after it.
Eight weeks out: name and domain — before the signwriter
The moment your shortlist of names exists, and before you commit to any of it, check two things for each candidate: is the .co.uk or .com domain available, and is the Instagram handle free? Five minutes on a domain registrar and the Instagram app. If "The Copper Kettle" is taken everywhere and you'd be @thecopperkettle_leeds_official, that's worth knowing before the sign is painted, the cups are printed, and the change costs real money.
When the name wins, register the domain the same day — about £10–15 a year, paid to the registrar, in your own name with your own account. Not the web person's name, not "we'll sort it later". Whoever controls the domain controls your future website and email, and untangling a domain registered to someone else's account is a miserable, recurring story. Even if the website is months away, the domain costs less than a round of coffees and removes the risk forever.
Seven weeks out: claim the Instagram handle and start posting
Claim the handle, then — counterintuitively — start posting now, before there's a cafe. The fit-out is genuinely good content: the stripped-out shell, the counter arriving, the paint decision, the first test bakes at home. By opening day you'll have a small local following who feel invested, and Instagram's job for a cafe is exactly this — personality and anticipation for people who already know you exist. (Its limits are a separate, important subject: is Instagram enough for a cafe? Short answer, it's half the setup.)
Six weeks out: Google Business Profile, set to "opening soon"
This is the step everyone does too late. Google lets you create a business profile with a future opening date — and you should, six weeks out, for one big reason: verification takes time. Google may want a video walkthrough or even a postcard to the premises, and an unverified profile is invisible on Maps. Start now and the clock runs while you're busy with everything else; start opening week and you spend your launch invisible.
Create it at google.com/business: exact name as it'll appear on the shopfront, the right primary category ("Cafe" or "Coffee shop", not "Restaurant"), address, opening date, and your first photos — fit-out shots are fine for now. The full field-by-field setup, including the eight photos and the review routine for later, is in our Google Business Profile guide; do the claiming half now and the polish at four weeks.
Four weeks out: the one-page website
With the domain owned and the profile cooking, it's website time — and for a new cafe (or bakery, brunch spot, or tea room) it's one fast page, nothing more: menu, hours, map, photos, phone, Instagram feed. (The complete spec, including the expensive things to refuse, is in what a cafe website should include.) Four weeks out you won't have finished food photos; launch with the space, the counter and the best fit-out shots, and swap in food photos in week one. A "we open on the 14th — here's the menu" page is completely legitimate and starts earning Google's trust immediately, because domains and pages age like this: the earlier they exist, the more established they are by the day you need them.
Why four weeks and not opening week: Google takes days to weeks to crawl, index and start showing a new site, and the profile verification (remember it?) wants a website to cross-check against. Everything you do early compounds; everything you do late just barely arrives.
Three weeks out: the menu goes online
The menu is usually finalised around now — the moment it is, it goes on the website as real text with prices, not a PDF of the print file (the reasons are a whole article: how to put your menu online). Then point your Google profile's menu link at it. Dish names are search terms: "cinnamon bun [town]" starts working for you the day the words exist on a page Google can read. This is also the moment to add the menu highlights to the profile itself.
Two weeks out: local listings and the boring consistency pass
Now the unglamorous step that quietly moves rankings: make sure your name, address and phone number appear identically — character for character — everywhere they exist: website, Google profile, Instagram bio, Facebook page if you have one, Apple Maps (register via Apple Business Connect, it feeds every iPhone's default maps app), Bing Places, and the local directories that matter in your area. Google corroborates you against the wider web; consistency is the whole trick, and mismatched details are one of the classic reasons a cafe doesn't show up on Maps.
Launch week: the search checks
Opening week, run the full pre-flight, in an incognito browser window on a phone:
- Search your cafe's name — profile appears, verified, hours right, opening date gone?
- Search your name + town — website appears too?
- Search "cafe near me" from inside the premises — do you appear on the map at all?
- Tap every button on your own profile: Website, Menu, Directions, Call — each lands somewhere true?
- Load the website on mobile data and count the seconds
- Check the menu prices on the site match the ones on the counter
- Ask your first genuinely delighted customer for your first Google review — the first ten matter most
The version where you skip most of the work
A confession about this checklist: steps one to three you must do yourself — the domain, the handle and the profile belong in your hands and cost almost nothing. The website steps, though, are exactly the work we do for new cafes: send one photo of the fit-out and your Instagram link, and we'll build a free mockup of your cafe's website in 48 hours — menu as proper text, details matched to your profile, live well before the paint's dry. Free to see, £20 a month if you take it live, and you've one less item on the hundred-item list.